"I cried like almost 15 thousand times," she said afterward. "It was so crazy. But I kept promising everybody I wasn't going to cry and they were like, 'Cry!' 'You're not helping!' But it was an amazing moment."

Lopez relished the chance to "kind of walk down memory lane" with Wayans — "he's the reason I moved to Los Angeles because I got that job as a fly girl" — and Nava, who put her in her first movie.

"You realize you've been at this for a long time and you've been fighting and getting it," she said. "It's a real kind of landmark day for me and I am just glad my family was here to share it with me."

Just don't ask Max and Emme what the fuss was all about.

"I just told them, 'Mommy is getting a star today,'" said Lopez. "They don't really know what that means but they were great."

A committee selects celebrities eligible for a star and those who accept pay $30,000 in costs and fees.

"For a romantic like me, it's forever and I believe in that. I believe in forever. It's a good day," Lopez said.